Boundaries are blurred for a young boy attending his mother’s cocktail party. Characters and symbols interact in an abstract look at the relation- ships between childhood and adulthood, escapism, and sexuality.

Director’s Statement: Daniela Sherer

I think animation is all about movement and timing. I like to manipulate the drawings in my films to such a degree that they become completely abstract moving shapes. I use those abstract elements, characters, and the energy of the overall animated movement to tell stories.

Greg McLeod created one second of animation every day for a year. There was no storyline, script or storyboard. His ideas came from things read, seen, or experienced on that day, with a little artistic license for good measure. The result? A fast-paced stream of consciousness that is funny, poignant, and always memorable.

Director’s Statement: The Brothers McLeod

Greg McLeod: It struck me as an interesting challenge and one that wouldn’t be tied down by a traditional narrative structure. I had to post a still from each day on Facebook with an explanation of the image. My brother Myles made sure I didn’t redo or reuse any animation. That was it, really. It was a challenge and time consuming, over a thousand hours of work. But I found it very rewarding. It was like an animation gym with a workout every day. I’d say I’m pretty fit now!

In the latest hand-drawn pen and ink animation from Bill Plympton, AIFF Artistic Achievement Award honoree, a hunter goes in search of a mysterious monster that is destroying the environment, only to arrive at an unexpected revelation.

Director’s Statement: Bill Plympton

I feel that Footprints is one of my most meaningful films — besides being funny, it has a message, albeit an elusive one.

The Bigger Picture uses an innovative mix of life-sized paintings and stop-motion animation to tell the bittersweet, darkly humorous, and very real story of two brothers struggling to care for their elderly mother. And Mother isn’t going to make it easy on either of them.

Director’s Statement: Daisy Jacobs

The film is, fundamentally, a morality tale that urges us to look beyond our own narrow, selfish lives, and see “the bigger picture.” I wanted creative expression and medium to complement this message. Animation comes off the page, away from miniatures, into full-size film sets, where painted characters explode twenty feet up a wall and burst out of the conventional “frame,” and where characters are created not with small movements of a pencil but with sweeping, physically-demanding movements of my whole body.

A little girl suffers an emotional wound. In her imagination, the wound takes on a life of its own in the form of a shaggy creature that becomes her best friend. They grow up together, side by side. Deeply settled in the girl’s mind, the creature seeks complete control of her life.

Director’s Statement: Anna Budanova

I am pleased that my work is understood and greatly appreciated by people from a different cultural back- ground. The film is based on my own memory and was developed into a short anime with the help of several of my friends.

Sam has stopped taking his medication; he doesn’t think he is ill. His mother is distraught, and the doctor thinks he should change the medication. Inspired by the book Henry’s Demons and by actual family therapy sessions, this intriguing film presents a psychiatrist and a troubled boy and his mother; all three perspectives presented simultaneously on an animated triptych, each drawn by a different artist.

Directors’ Statement:

Anna Benner, Pia Borg, Gemma Burditt

The emphasis in family therapy is on the family unit rather than on the individual and his or her “problem.” We feel that this is a fascinating subject for artists. We ask the audience to reflect upon the subject of communication in a situation where one mind is working in a completely different way from another. We looked for graphic ways of expressing both verbal and behavioural communication, moving into abstract, poetic territory in the middle of the film.

A group of logs is about to freeze to death in a cold, icy desert. When they realize that their own bodies are all they have to fuel a warming fire, things start heating up!

Director’s Statement: Nils Hedinger

What interests me in animation is being able to tell a story on multiple levels. I hope that my films are funny, entertaining, and thought-provoking. And additionally, I just like to sit at my desk, in complete solitude, and to repeat the same drawing over and over a million times.

This film looks at the daily lives of people living in a windy area, who are helplessly exposed to the weather. Yet they have learned to deal with the difficult conditions, using the wind to their advantage.

Director’s Statement: Robert Löbel

I had two ideas for a long time — on the one hand, the breakdown of a social system and on the other, people who have learned to live in difficult places. Both have a strong natural conflict, and people learn to deal with it. So for me the question was: How could I build an abstract natural system, which I could switch off for a moment? The first thing that came to my mind was the wind. Wind is natural and the perfect visual system. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, but still, it’s difficult to live with.